Season 1 Episode 05 Mechanical Trees
Company Name : Carbon Collect Limited
Formerly known as Silicon Kingdom Holdings Limited
Business Industry: Carbon Capture
Number of Employees: 10-25
Business Type: B2B
Years in Business: 2
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Company Name : Carbon Collect Limited
Formerly known as Silicon Kingdom Holdings Limited
OUR MISSION
To develop our MechanicalTree™ technology to have the greatest impact on climate change.
OUR GOAL
To achieve 1 gigaton of CO2 capture annually, representing 3% of current global emissions.
Business Model
Short term
Capture and re-use of CO2 to provide a ‘green CO2’ alternative to existing CO2 produced from fossil fuels. This market includes food and beverage manufacturing, industrial use cases, and agricultural uses. The MechanicalTrees™ operates onsite and eliminates transport and logistics.
Long term
Carbon Collect’s primary focus will be capture and permanent disposal of CO2 using MechanicalTree™ carbon capture farms. Enables industrial-scale CO2 capture from ambient air and disposal via underground geological formations such as saline aquifers. Each individual carbon farm will capture up to 4m tons annually. Hundreds of these farms can make a significant contribution to solving the climate change problem.
The Technology and IP
The underlying technology is the ability to capture CO2 from ambient air in an energy-efficient manner. We refer to this as ‘Passive Direct Air Capture’. This was developed by Dr. Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University. Dr. Lackner is known as the father of ‘Direct Air Capture’ which is the science of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. There are just a handful of Direct Air Capture firms globally and the major challenges are scaling, and the energy cost of capturing CO2.
Carbon Collect enjoys global exclusive rights to this technological breakthrough by Dr. Lackner.
Carbon Collect has engineered the MechanicalTree™. The company is generating significant new IP through its engineering program and will continue to generate further significant new IP and patentable innovations. These will span engineering, materials, energy systems, smart control systems including AI and machine learning, as well as the chemistry incorporated in our solution.
Commercial Agreement with Arizona State University
Carbon Collect’s agreement with ASU includes the allocation of equity to the University and global exclusive rights to the underlying technology assigned to Carbon Collect. This ‘Passive Direct Air Capture’ allows capture of CO2 from ambient air with no mechanical assistance. This is a unique advantage in Direct Air Capture. The University is represented on Carbon Collect’s board.
Under the agreement, Carbon Collect funds ongoing research by Dr. Klaus Lackner and can have exclusive rights to new IP arising from this funded research. Carbon Collect pays no license fees to the University outside the assigned equity and research supports.
U.S. Department of Energy Support for the MechanicalTree™
In a significant step for Carbon Collect and its technology, on June 15, 2021, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced an award of $2.5m to support the development of the MechanicalTree™ – one of just three awards for Direct Air Capture across the U.S. The award will support the design for carbon farms using the MechanicalTree™ for three locations in the U.S., with each aiming to capture a steady capacity of 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per day.
The Secretary of Energy says, “These DOE investments, and the ones we will make with President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, are crucial to advancing technology that will help us avoid the worst effects of climate change and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.”
Q & A With Reyad Fezzani and Pól Ó Móráin
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